You can only parry ranged attacks with energy-based melee weapons: not even shields. If you exceed the parry roll by at least the use rating of the ranged attack, you may re-direct the shot back at the target!

If a third minifig joins the fray, just treat it as regular CC combat.

IVhorseman wrote:You can only parry ranged attacks with energy-based melee weapons: not even shields.

I think Mike changed that in the 2010 version.This is what it says under the Shield section:

A Shield is like a Hand Weapon devoted exclusively for Parrying (5.2: Close Combat), although they can sometimes also be handy for Shoving opponents into proper position for a follow-up attack. A minifig can Parry a wider range of incoming attacks with a Shield than with a regular Hand Weapon, including Joust attacks (H.3: Fighting From Horseback), Crash Damage, thrown weapons, and even some slower projectiles like arrows and slingshot bullets (although not, for instance, rifle rounds or lightning bolts).

IVhorseman wrote:You can only parry ranged attacks with energy-based melee weapons: not even shields. If you exceed the parry roll by at least the use rating of the ranged attack, you may re-direct the shot back at the target!

If a third minifig joins the fray, just treat it as regular CC combat.

Well your second example also has a very simple answer. In the rulebook it says that you can only use a respond action on something the minifig could have actually anticipated or in your line of sight. So in your case the minifig didn't see or know that he was being shot at and thus can't parry the shot. The thing is that minifigs in CC will probably never get the chance to parry incoming fire because they probably have no response action left because they spent it on CC.

IVhorseman wrote:You can only parry ranged attacks with energy-based melee weapons: not even shields.

I think Mike changed that in the 2010 version.This is what it says under the Shield section:

A Shield is like a Hand Weapon devoted exclusively for Parrying (5.2: Close Combat), although they can sometimes also be handy for Shoving opponents into proper position for a follow-up attack. A minifig can Parry a wider range of incoming attacks with a Shield than with a regular Hand Weapon, including Joust attacks (H.3: Fighting From Horseback), Crash Damage, thrown weapons, and even some slower projectiles like arrows and slingshot bullets (although not, for instance, rifle rounds or lightning bolts).

There's talk about this getting changed once 2010 comes out. In the newer ruleset, shields wouldn't parry ANY ranged attacks, but WOULD grant partial cover if applicable. There'd be a second classification of "heavy" shields potenitally, and I'm not sure if those ones are the only ones that grant cover or not.

IVhorseman wrote:There's talk about this getting changed once 2010 comes out. In the newer ruleset, shields wouldn't parry ANY ranged attacks, but WOULD grant partial cover if applicable. There'd be a second classification of "heavy" shields potenitally, and I'm not sure if those ones are the only ones that grant cover or not.

I still haven't made the deicision about heavy shields. Regular shields will most likely be able to parry thrown weapons and provide potential cover against all other ranged attacks. However, because of the way cover works, it will be very rare that a regular-sized shield will be in the right position and pointing the right direction to cover any part of a minifig completely enough to provide a bonus.

Natalya wrote:What's that? I can't hear you over the sound of how banned you are.

Right, but what happens when all your figs employ tower shields? My buddy and I have been using the stands that come with the collectible minifigs as shields - and those cover a LOT of area. Even a minifig with a regular shield can position it in a way where it upgrades their 1/3 cover bonus to 2/3. It's a lot less rare than you think.

The part I forgot to mention is that minifigs aren't allowed to "actively" parry against ranged attacks other than thrown weapons. If they are already pointing their shields in the right direction when the ranged attacks are made, then yeah, they can be useful. But if the attacker is able to move the firing position two inches to the right, it's usually enough to see at least a little bit of whatever body section the shields were covering.

What it means is that if you know exactly which direction you'll be taking fire from, you can set up your defense appropriately, but if you're outflanked, you're toast. And it will naturally be much tougher to shoot around the shields of hoplites in turtle formation.

I might allow units to spend an Action to keep a shield between themselves and a specific attacker, but it might be a shade more complexity than it's worth unless I can bundle it in with the generalized response action rule.

Natalya wrote:What's that? I can't hear you over the sound of how banned you are.

This seems like a good plan, since most projectiles move way too fast for you to move your shield in time. Unless a volley of arrows is coming from really far away. But in that case you just hold up your shield and hope for the best, rather than trying to block a single arrow. Or at least that's how I'd imagine it goes. Only parrying thrown attacks seems reasonable. Spending an action to black against an individual attacker seems too complicated, and would lead to arguments about who was blocking who.

A minifig can Parry a wider range of incoming attacks with a Shield than with a regular Hand Weapon, including Joust attacks (H.3: Fighting From Horseback), Crash Damage, thrown weapons, and even some slower projectiles like arrows and slingshot bullets (although not, for instance, rifle rounds or lightning bolts).